I'm curious who aside from PB and Farrahclown make her list. Since Obama's pastor of 20 years has made worse statements that anything Buchanan has said, to my knowledge, i'm curious who her list would and would not include.

The question: "At what point is someone beyond the social pale for all areas because of the views held in some areas?"

Discuss that, but my view is that CCP should decide what goes into CCP posts until HE crosses the line - and he hasn't! Same goes for the right of anyone here to criticize any quote or person quoted.

Alleged or implied of Buchanan was: "diminished the Holocaust and made somewhat supportive statements of Hitler and made antisemitic and anti Israel statements."

I think I was the only one to actually back that up with this link to the anti-defamation league: "search the anti-defamation league website for 'Buchanan' at website http://www.adl.org/search/query.asp". There are a bunch of over the top quotes there especially from his books. In and amongst the real objections are many quotes that are not so objectionable but just different than their own viewpoint, for example Buchanan opposes gay marriage which makes it harder to sort out the context where he made bonehead remarks like not knowing the CO levels of diesel engines.

Interestingly we just had Rush Limbaugh have his liberty taken due to quotes originating from a blog, picked up by the St. Louis Dispatch and CNN. Pretty good sources. Happened to be patently false. Same goes for context on the rest of what he says. The NY Times quotes him without noting that he points out absurdity by using absurdity; it is one of his techniques, so the quotes are real while the meaning and the context is lost. No one who listens regularly thinks he is racist or wants America to fail but every liberal who gets his words from elsewhere thinks exactly that. So he was denied a right within our economic system - to buy into a business of his choosing.

Crafty, recall also that Jude Wanniski was not exactly a friend of Israel. He was a defender of Saddam - one who paid people to kill Israelis, a denier of gassing the Kurds, but brilliant on economics. Off the board??

Back to the question, no one Muslim and certainly not Ahmadinejad could be posted if we ever took the wider and longer view. Nothing from Obama on this board it follows because he is on a quest to sit down with the guy, etc.

Of course I should have stopped there, but it was Rachel who wrote the most offensive view I've read here, and in return I'm sure vice versa. She basically said tough luck to the consequence of her abortion view which is current law, (like the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany) that nearly cost my daughter her life, defending the complete right of the mother to kill her unborn for any reason, in this case during a bipolar mood swing with the motive of spite, and that all men, the father in particular and the other relatives should have no say whatsoever in the process or in setting the law. Please correct me if wrong; I have no intention of overstating that point.

The silence of others here on abortion is deafening but the analogies to Hitlerisms never end - a primitive life form of lower value, not worth preserving. Where have I heard that before? 'Diminished the tragedy and made somewhat supportive statements of [those who choose to kill] and made anti-fetal statements' - 'not much different than a sperm and so what if it is alive with unique DNA', etc.

Yet I find her views on other subjects and other posts here extremely valuable and worthwhile. For example, I find this contribution yesterday brilliant, and not something I would run into elsewhere during my typical day: "According to the Midrash, the Third Commandment, "You shall not take G-d's name in vain," and the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not steal," are one and the same. Indeed, the Torah (in Leviticus 5:20) refers to financial fraud as "a betrayal of G-d." "Because," explains the great Talmudic sage Rabbi Akiva, "in defrauding his fellow, he is defrauding the Third Party to their dealings."

I wouldn't want my previous disagreement to prevent me from learning this kind of insight. - Doug----And since this is the fire hydrant, will someone tell me why we call God "G-d"? I think he knows we're talkin' about him.

Jeremiah Wright, the pastor emeritus at Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) in Chicago, is once again at the center of a controversy after making inflammatory statements about Jews and Zionists.

Wright blamed Jews for the fact that he has been out of touch with President Barack Obama in an interview with the Daily Press, a Newport News, Virginia-based newspaper, on June 9. Wright noted that "them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me."

In the same interview, Wright asserted that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza, which he described as "a sin and a crime against humanity," and expressed his belief that the Obama Administration would have sent a U.S. delegation to the 2009 Durban Review Conference in April if not for fear of losing "the Jewish vote, the A-I-P-A-C vote, that's controlling him."

Wright later stated that he misspoke and that he did not mean to refer to Jews, but rather Zionists. "I'm not talking about all Jews, all people of the Jewish faith, I'm talking about Zionists," Wright said.

Wright's initial comments and subsequent effort to distinguish between Jews and Zionists is reminiscent of his past inflammatory comments, which propelled him into the spotlight during Obama's primary run, and which he maintained had been taken out of context by the media and others.

Wright was thrust into the national spotlight in early 2008, at the height of then-Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign. As the media investigated Obama's longtime membership at TUCC and his relationship with Wright, at the time TUCC's pastor, several of Wright's sermons and writings became the focus of attention.

In his statements, Wright expressed support for Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam; accused Israel of committing state terrorism; asserted that the U.S. brought the 2001 World Trade Center attacks upon itself; and charged that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus as a means of "genocide against people of color."

The media's focus on TUCC raised questions reaching beyond Wright's views on domestic and foreign policy issues. Themes of white supremacy and black repression in Wright's sermons and in the church's guiding principles, along with TUCC's motto "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian," compelled some critics to charge that the church promoted divisive, separatist views.

Though Wright refrained from responding to criticism and making public appearances throughout much of the election year, he did conduct a round of appearances in response to Obama's March 18, 2008 speech on race relations in the U.S. In Obama's speech, titled "A More Perfect Union," he distanced himself from Wright and some of his past statements.

During interviews, sermons, and televised speeches held over the course of one week in April 2008, Wright addressed issues surrounding religious and racial diversity, emphasized that his sermons has been distorted by the media for political purposes, and portrayed the controversy surrounding his past sermons as an attack against the Black church.

Wright also denied accusations that he is divisive when discussing race relations, stating, "I am not one of the most 'divisive'… the word is 'descriptive." He claimed that real-world conditions, not his commentary, are responsible for the nation's ills.

Under scrutiny for the inflammatory comments about Israel and Zionism that had marked some of his past speeches, Wright was repeatedly questioned about his views on the subjects during these April 2008 talks.

At an appearance that same week at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Wright refused to denounce Farrakhan's comments about Zionism being a gutter religion when asked about them during the question and answer session. Wright emphasized that Farrakhan made the comment about Zionism, not Judaism, and stated, "He was saying the same thing UN resolutions say, same thing Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu are being vilified for." (Former U.S. President Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu frequently compare Israel's treatment of Palestinians to South African Apartheid).

He further said he would not denounce Farrakhan, adding that "Farrakhan is not my enemy, he didn't put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and didn't make me this color."

When asked about his own views on Israel, Wright challenged the questioner's assertion that he has likened Israeli policy to apartheid ("Where did I liken them?... Jimmy Carter called it apartheid; Jeremiah Wright didn't liken anything to anything"). He stated, "My position on Israel is that Israel has a right to exist, that Israelis have a right to exist." However, he then cited The Link, an anti-Israel publication from Americans for Middle East Understanding, posing the question, "Have you read the Link?"

Wright also addressed Israel and the Israeli-Arab conflict during an appearance at Michigan State University a few months earlier. During his talk on February 7, 2008, Wright described the creation of the state of Israel as "a political decision made in 1948 to solve a European problem of European Jews by putting them in somebody else's country."

He said he identified with Carter, Tutu and Jim Wall of Christian Century, saying that like them he would be "labeled as anti-Semitic" for citing U.N. resolutions and international court findings pertaining to Israel and the Palestinians.

Wright served as the pastor at TUCC from 1972 until he retired in 2008.

"Them Jews aren't gonna let [Obama] talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office."

"The Jewish vote, the A-I-P-A-C vote that's controlling him that would not let him send a representation to the Darfur [Durban] review conference that's talking this craziness because the Zionists, they will not let him talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. The ethnic cleansing of the Zionists is a sin and a crime against humanity. They don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel."

An interview with Newport News, VA-based

newspaper The Daily Press June 9, 2009

"Part of the fight going on now in terms of the religious arguments and tension and polarization and hatred among the fundamentalists especially in each of the major world religions has to do with the political [rather than religious], especially as it pertains to the political decision made in 1948 to solve a European problem of European Jews by putting them in somebody else's country."

From a lecture at Michigan State University,

February 7, 2008

"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against them as being anti-Semitic."

From a sermon at Howard University in

Washington, D.C., January 15, 2006

"The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community up concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism. The Divestment issue will hit the floor during this month's General Synod. Divesting dollars from businesses and banks that do business with Israel is the new strategy being proposed to wake the world up concerning the racism of Zionism."

From Wright's Pastor's Page message

Trumpet Newsmagazine, July 2005

"Last year's conference in Africa on racism, which the United States would not participate in, because somebody dared to point the racism which still supports both here and in Israel. I said that dirty word again. Every time you say Israel, Negros get awfully quiet on you, 'cause they scared. Don't be scared. Don't be scared. You don't see the connection between 9-1-1-0-1 and the Israeli-Palestinian? Something wrong, you wanna borrow my glasses?"

From a sermon, September 1, 2002

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye…We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done oversees is now brought right back into our own front yards. Americans chickens are coming home to roost.'"

From a sermon, September 16, 2001

On Louis Farrakhan

"Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. Everyone wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago… Louis and I don't agree on everything….He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st centuries, that's what I think about him…Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy, he didn't put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and didn't make me this color."

From an appearance at the National Press Club

in Washington DC, April 28, 2008

"… Farrakhan is not my enemy, Farrakhan did not enslave Africans. He never raped a black woman, and Farrakhan didn't make me this color. Let's be clear."

"[Farrakhan] made some anti-Semitic remarks. Well, you all got water boarding you say is fine, you're killing folk… in Guantanamo there's a secret part of that camp where you been torturing folk… let's talk about that! We're not talking about that, what we keep up in the public is, oh you know Jeremiah Wright… in 1984 I went to… Tripoli and got to know Farrakhan."

From a lecture at Michigan State University,

February 7, 2008

"Everybody may not agree with him, but they listen…His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest."

"Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience. His integrity and honesty have secured him a place in history as one of the nation's most powerful critics. His love for Africa and African American people has made him an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose."

For me deciding someone is beyond the pale is somewhat like deciding if something is pornographic or not. I know it when I see it.

We can add Rev Wright to the list of those beyond the pale . Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh are not on the list though I personally am not interested in their views.

I wouldn't put CCP on the list for posting articles by Buchanan so I wouldn't need to put Obama on the list for belonging to Rev Wright's church.

I am somewhat hesitant to post this because I am the one posting most of the religious articles on the site but I personally have some issues with Christianity period so not liking Obama's pastor was not a big deal to me. Clearly some Pastors are a million times better than others and I should have paid more attention to that. I am not interested in discussing whose religion is better or in discussing my personal issues with Christianity. If your Christianity makes you a better person then I support it. Judaism is the right path for me but I don't think it is the right path for everyone.

"The secterian thinks that he has the sea ladled into his own private pond"- Rabindranath Tagore

I'm pretty sure that posting an article is somewhat different than attending religious services for 20 years. Louis Farrakhan was the only person to appear on the cover of Wright's church magazine as many times as Obama.

I guess all those issues got lost in the mail.

So Rachel, if your rabbi started doing/saying anything like Wright did, how many decades do you wait until you find another place to worship?

One service which I'm sure was your point. We pray for our Country our Leadership and our Troops in my synagogue. I have certainly been very uncomfortable by comments made by Rabbis of places that I would occasionally attend. I think it is not rational to think every member of Trinity is an anti-semite and anti-american or that Rev Wright only spewed hate for 20 years. Do you know other members of Trinity besides Obama because I do. I take the good with the bad in my religion. I care much more about peoples actions their beliefs.

Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became a household name last month when ABC News reported on some of Wright’s inflammatory sermons. As his applauding congregation cheered him on, the former leader of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ condemned the U.S. government for “killing innocent people” and for treating American citizens, especially blacks, as “less than human.” “God Damn America,” Rev. Wright preached.

These sentiments were entirely consistent with comments Wright had made many times during his long pastoral career. From the pulpit, Rev. Wright also has taught that AIDS was concocted by the federal government as a genocidal plot against blacks. On another occasion, he declared, “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run! ... We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

Millions of Americans were shocked to hear such vituperative rage and unrestrained anti-American hatred. They need not have been surprised. Rev. Wright’s passionate disdain for his country, and his belief that black Americans are still singled out for persecution, is entirely in keeping with the political philosophy that underpins his religious views: Black Liberation Theology.

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to “Black Liberation Theology,” and to the name of one of its leading mouthpieces, James Cone, a professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary and an iconic figure venerated by Rev. Wright.

Until ABC News picked up the story months later, Black Liberation Theology remained a rather obscure discipline, confined to the syllabi of liberal seminaries. But after Wright’s sermons were broadcast again and again on the news and the Internet, Black Liberation Theology once again commanded popular attention. After all, Barack Obama had joined Trinity twenty years earlier, had been married in the Church, and had his daughters baptized there. Obama and his wife had donated $22,500 to Trinity in 2006. The presidential hopeful even took the name of his memoir, The Audacity of Hope, from the title of one of Wright’s sermons. The beliefs held by a presidential candidate’s longtime pastor and spiritual advisor are therefore of great national interest.

And what are those beliefs? Like the pro-communist liberation theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of “salvation” in the afterlife is superseded by “liberation” on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.

The leading theorist of Black Liberation Theology is James Cone. Overtly racist, Cone’s writings posit a black Jesus who leads African-Americans as the “chosen people.” In Cone’s cosmology, whites are “the devil,” and “all white men are responsible for white oppression.” Cone makes this point without ambiguity: “This country was founded for whites and everything that has happened in it has emerged from the white perspective,” Cone has written. “What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

If whiteness stands for all that is evil, blackness symbolizes all that is good. “Black theology,” says Cone, “refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” Small wonder that some critics have condemned black liberation theology as “racist idolatry” and “Afro-Nazism.”

Furthermore, according to Cone, “black values” are superior to American values. Sure enough, the “About Us” statement on Trinity’s web page includes the following Cone-inspired declaration: “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”

It is troubling that Barack Obama’s closest friends and allies subscribe to an explicitly racist doctrine. Even more worrying is that the main exponent of Black Liberation Theology sees Obama as a kindred spirit. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Obama’s pastor and Church, Cone said: “I’ve read both of Barack Obama’s books, and I heard the speech [on race]. I don’t see anything in the books or in the speech that contradicts black liberation theology.”

It’s tempting to see figures like Cone and Wright as fringe actors with no constituency in the wider black community. Yet Cone considers himself to be the natural successor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and not everyone finds the comparison jarring.

Similarly with Rev. Wright. At a summit of black pastors held shortly after the recent controversy broke, many defended Wright’s sermons as part of the “prophetic preaching” tradition embodied by the assassinated civil rights leader.

Said Rev. Frederick Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship West Baptist Church: “If Martin Luther King, Jr. were pastoring a church today, it would look very much like Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, and the sermons you would hear him preach would sound very much” like Wright’s.

Stacey Floyd-Thomas, who teaches ethics and serves as Director of black church studies at Brite Divinity School in Texas, explained that King, foreshadowing Wright, had once called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Moreover, said Floyd-Thomas, King was assassinated before he could deliver his scheduled Sunday sermon entitled “Why America May Go to Hell.”

Black Liberation Theology, in short, cannot be dismissed as a minority view. Americans are thus left with the troubling knowledge that millions of their fellow citizens consider them to be “devils,” having been taught to think this way by their religious leaders. They must wonder, too, why they should entrust the presidency to a man who has surrounded himself with those who actively despise the very country he seeks to lead.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new book exposing abuses by Canada’s Human Rights Commissions, The Tyranny of Nice, includes an introduction by Mark Steyn.

GM,Do you think that you ever given me information about Rev Wright, Samantha Powers,Bill Ayers or any of Obama's friends and associates etc that I didn't already have? If you are just making points that is fine but please stop us me as your object lesson I'm not interested. If you feel like my problem is lack of information its not. I just look at the exact information and come to different conclusions.

I have absolutely no interest in discussing any form of Christian theology at all.

Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.

What played out last week on America's television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of "black liberation theology" and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.

One of the strangest dialogues in American political history ensued on March 15 when Fox News interviewed Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago's Trinity Church. Wright asserted the authority of the "black liberation" theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins:

Wright: How many of Cone's books have you read? How many of Cone's book have you read?

Sean Hannity: Reverend, Reverend?

(crosstalk)

Wright: How many books of Cone's have you head?

Hannity: I'm going to ask you this question ...

Wright: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read?

Hannity: You're very angry and defensive. I'm just trying to ask a question here.

Wright: You haven't answered - you haven't answered my question.

Hopkins is a full professor at the University of Chicago's Divinity School; Cone is now distinguished professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary. They promote a "black power" reading of Christianity, to which liberal academic establishment condescends.

Obama referred to this when he asserted in a March 14 statement, "I knew Reverend Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago." But the fact the liberal academy condescends to sponsor black liberation theology does not make it less peculiar to mainstream American Christians. Obama wants to talk about what Wright is, rather than what he says. But that way lies apolitical quicksand.

Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the "Chosen People" of God - French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.

During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains: Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants. Theologically, Cone's argument is as silly as the "Aryan Christianity" popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people". Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.

Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God's purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains: Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1] In the black liberation theology taught by Wright, Cone and Hopkins, Jesus Christ is not for all men, but only for the oppressed: In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors ... Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not [Cone]. In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a "drop of the bucket" and "dust on the scales", in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the "Chosen People".

That is the "biblical scholarship" to which Obama referred in his March 14 defense of Wright and his academic prominence. In his response to Hannity, Wright genuinely seemed to believe that the authority of Cone and Hopkins, who now hold important posts at liberal theological seminaries, was sufficient to make the issue go away. His faith in the white establishment is touching; he honestly cannot understand why the white reporters at Fox News are bothering him when the University of Chicago and the Union Theological Seminary have put their stamp of approval on black liberation theology.

Many things that the liberal academy has adopted, though, will horrify most Americans, and not only "black liberation theology" (Queer Studies comes to mind, among other things). It cannot be in Obama's best interests to appeal to the authority of Cone, whose unapologetic racism must be repugnant to the great majority of Americans, including the majority of black Americans, who for the most part belong to Christian churches that preach mainstream Christian doctrine. Christianity teaches unconditional love for a God whose love for humankind is absolute; it does not teach the repudiation of a God who does not destroy our enemies on the spot.

Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago's black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church.

Obama views Wright rather at arm's length: as the New York Times reported on April 30, 2007: Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through," Mr Obama said. "He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality. Obama holds his own views close. But it seems unlikely that he would identify with the ideological fits of the black-power movement of the 1960s. Obama does not come to the matter with the perspective of an American black, but of the child of a left-wing anthropologist raised in the Third World, as I wrote elsewhere (Obama's women reveal his secret , Asia Times Online, February 26, 2008). It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.

Note1. See William R Jones, "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).

I'm missing the point here about the Not so Right Rev. Wright. Why are we discussing him at all GM? Has anyone been quoting him? Perhaps I am missing the point here, but I sense us drifting off point from the question presented-- the use of lucid views by persons who hold views on other subjects that we consider beyond the pale.

FWIW in my own life I have had to wrestle with this three times. In no particular order:

a) Jude Wanniski: Author of the utterly brilliant "The Way the World Works", considered by the WSJ to be "one of the one hundred most important books of the 20th Century", in his later years Jude became quite an anti-semitic crank (e.g. hung out with Farrkhan) and apologist for Saddam Hussein;b) Carl Jung: Only after years of random study in admiration of Jung did I discover that, at the least, apparently he had dalliance with the Nazis to the point of attacking Freud for his "Jewish science" or something like that;c) Konrad Lorenz: An Austrian scientist whose influence on me is so great that I named my son Conrad after him, apparently had his Nobel Prize removed because of some things he said in the 1930s-40s. I'm not really clear on what they were or what happened.

In all three cases I have decided to bifurcate the good and the bad. Where the anti-semitism question arises, I address it openly and when it doesn't, I don't-- though I have prefaced quoting Wanniski by prefacing it by saying something like "Though in his later years JW became quite a crank, including anti-semitism, here I find his thinking quite sound. etc."

In the case of Pat Buchanan, in my opinion he is a anti-Jewish bigot. He also holds lucid opinions with which I don't agree, and he holds some lucid opinions which I am willing to entertain. As a Jew, like Rachel, I do tend to wince a bit to see his name pop up, but I am not ready to call for banishing any and all use of his writings.

Perhaps the solution with quoting such person is to note from time to time, the dubious nature of some of this person's views and that quoting them here should not be taken as thinking all his views respectable?

Thank you for your kinds words. I greatly appreciate you not posting any Buchanan's articles .

I don't agree with Marc's reasonable argument about taking the good and noting the bad because Buchanan is still alive and he could be supporting (including monetarily) his more problematic ideas.

I have no problems problem bifurcating for someone who is not around to cause harm. I think it would be a grave error not to read the founding fathers because they owned slaves even though that is a much worse act than anything Buchanan has ever done.

I am not wishing Buchanan dead. I would be perfectly happy if he dropped his morally repugnant ideas or barring that wanted to go live in a yurt somewhere with no communication to the modern world.

BBG, I was looking for bottom up action not top down censorship. This forum has certainly made its feelings known when there were un-agreed with left wing wing views. I was looking for more of those kind of feelings relating to Buchanan.

BBG, I was looking for bottom up action not top down censorship. This forum has certainly made its feelings known when there were un-agreed with left wing wing views. I was looking for more of those kind of feelings relating to Buchanan.

Though I'm one of the folks who has been dissing Buchanan all along, as a rabid Libertarian just about any sort of prior restraint, be it administrative censorship or self-censorship, brings on a queasy sensation. I think one should be able to defend a piece or author one agrees with, or, if posting an interesting piece from an unknown source say as much as I often do, or post horrible pieces by horrible people and point out that you are using that as an example to argue the antithesis. And if someone blithely posts something by a noxious person they ought not be surprised if they get slapped around a bit for it.

As you may have noted, I often post pieces that dispute AGW in the most ardent of terms, a habit that causes many to label me a "denier;" those same folks would have you ignore everything that comes out of my mouth and perhaps haul me before some sort of AGW tribunal for having to temerity to speak directly to the many holes in their article of faith. Though I certainly don't think PB's instance is precisely congruent, my experience of being on the shouted down side of the question leaves me erring on the side of sharing, and being expected to intelligently defend, views.

This has been my default search. I was doing a search "CNN and Bobby Seales". I was trying to find out who was the CNN anouncer who told Seales it was a "privilege" to have him on the show. I posted this last week. I noticed O'Reilly literally that evening then had a 30 second shot of her saying this on the show I saw and commented rather sarcastically "a privilege, really?'

When I did the serach it says "latest posts by ccp" and there is my post on the issue from the board. I tried to do latest posts for others from the board and some of them also come up. I get to bing from the msn site:

Sorry, having LOTS of internet connection problems. Right now I am on the neighbor's connection. In that Cindy is out of town and she is the geek in our family, it is hard to predict when all of this will get straightened out.

A friendly reminder to please make use of the Subject heading when posting. When someone wants to find something that they read here, it will be nearly impossible without a subject heading whereas having a subject heading will greatly empower the use of this forum as a research tool.